Faculty Voices: Anne Ursu

Look At Me

Our residency this summer will be focused around point of view, and I’m giving the kickoff lecture, which means it falls on me to somehow synthesize POV issues into a coherent talk, which is rather like trying to clear out a hoarder’s living room so you can have dinner party there. Either way, you’re going to end up losing your faith in the omniscient narrator.

So, when lecture time starts approaching, I find myself reading with post-it flags nearby; and every once in a while a book proves so interesting that it starts looking like this:

Anne's copy with Post-its.

One Crazy Summer is brilliant for a lot of reasons, but my post-it flags came out because of the way Rita Williams-Garcia uses the idea of gaze to construct her protagonist’s world. In first person narration, we see the world as the protagonist sees it, and that’s revelatory—but we also learn a lot from the way the protagonist feels when the world gazes back at her. We see this all the time with romance plot-lines—where the hot boy looks at the narrator-girl, and suddenly the girl catalogues her perceived physical flaws for us. (Actually, I dare say we’ve seen that so much that we don’t need to see it any more.) But in Williams-Garcia’s hands, the use of gaze is far more complex.

One Crazy Summer is about eleven-year-old Delphine and her two younger sisters, Vonetta and Fern, who travel to Oakland in the summer of 1968 to see the mother who’d abandoned them years before. With Delphine as your guide, you realize that to be an African- American girl in 1968 you are constantly aware of the white people who are or might be looking at you, and what they see when they do. When they go to their gate at the airport in the beginning of the book, Delphine notices, “There weren’t too many of ‘us’ in the wait area, and too many of ‘them’ were staring.” On the plane, Delphine tries to keep her sisters in line, telling us, “The last thing Pa and Big Ma wanted to hear was how we made a grand Negro spectacle of ourselves thirty thousand feet up in the air around all these white people.”

Delphine’s job is to watch over her sisters, and in the scenes her eyes are constantly on them. In her narration, she barely focuses on herself; it makes sense, as the eldest, she’s valued for being a surrogate parent to the other girls. Their mother Cecile doesn’t take any of this burden away from Delphine; she barely looks at the girls, and certainly doesn’t ever see them for who they are. The only time she looks at Delphine is to intimidate her; when Delphine rebels against the nightly greasy Chinese take-out by bringing home food to cook, her mother stares at her, long and hard. “If that was supposed to make me feel afraid, stupid, and small,” Delphine tells us, “It worked.”

Whenever the sisters venture out, they have to deal with the gaze of others, whether it’s the white people with cameras who want to take the girls’ picture because they are “adorable dolls” and “so well-behaved.” Or the shop keeper who sets his eyes on them as soon as they walk into his shop; at first, Delphine thinks it’s because they are kids alone in his store, but then she realizes, “His hard stare was for the other reasons store clerks’ eyes never let up. We were black kids, and he expected us to steal.”

When the book begins, Delphine’s voice feels child-like and immediate; when the girls are on the plane to Oakland she’s terrified, and she tells us, “It was bad enough my insides squeezed in and stretched out like a monkey grinder’s accordion.” She refuses to show her fear, for the sake of her sisters. Through the book, Delphine is conscious of the image she’s projecting for everyone else to see; only we can see the scared little girl underneath it.

But as the book goes on, the voice grows a little more mature, and the narration a little more distant, as if the narrator-Delphine is now an older girl looking back on these events. You feel the separation between the two Delphines—as kid-Delphine lives through the story you become more and more aware of the older girl remembering them. Somehow this makes you love Delphine even more; now you have a sense of the girl she will become, the one who lived through this summer and grew from it. Or maybe it’s just because the narrator gives kid-Delphine what you're longing for for her--finally, someone sees her. Though the girl in the scenes doesn't know it, her older self is with her the entire time, promising her that she’s understood, that she’s seen.

And, we learn, it isn’t just by her older self. At the end of the summer, Cecile sits Delphine down and haltingly tells her her own life story. "I wasn't used to having her attention," Delphine tells us. "Having her look at me and talk. All the while she spoke, she didn't lift her eyes from me.”

When she takes the girls back to the airport, a white man stops them and tries to take their picture, cooing “Pretty girls, smile pretty!” Cecile puts a stop to it, standing in front of the girls and snapping at the man, ”They’re not monkeys on display.” Delphine tells us, “I felt bad for him, but I knew Cecile had to step in. Any mother would have at least done that.”

When they leave to board the plane, Delphine says, “I expected Cecile to walk away. To cut through the terminal in man-sized strides as soon as we got up and stood on-line. When I turned to see if she had gone, she was standing only a few feet away, looking straight at me. It was a strange, wonderful feeling. To discover eyes upon you when you expected no one to notice you at all.”

This is a fabulous book, one of the best middle grades in recent memory. It’s constructed so delicately and carefully, with voice and narration acting as a complex mediator between the reader, the girl living through this summer, and the girl she will become. Take a look.

Inkpot Interviews: Phyllis Root

Phyllis Root's latest book, Plant a Pocket of Prairie, was published by the University of Minnesota Press. It was released this month.

Please describe the book.
Plant a Pocket of Prairie is a non-fiction picture book about planting native prairie plants, with gorgeous woodblock illustrations by Betsy Bowen.

What research was involved, and how did it affect the story’s development?
I wrote a Minnesota counting book several years ago about the different ecosystems in Minnesota, where three biomes meet: Big Woods, boreal forest, and prairie. Doing research for the book meant many visits to Minnesota’s Scientific and Natural Areas to learn about native plants and animals (something I still love to do). I wanted to write a book about the prairie partly because it’s one of our most endangered ecosystems, partly because it’s so amazing and complex and lovely, and partly because I love the names of the flowers and plants that grow in a prairie. What’s not to love about foxglove beardtongue or bastard toadflax? I wrote a lot of failed drafts over several years before I found the focus for the book and figured out an arc. Along with visiting prairie, I’ve talked to naturalists, read many books, and gone to hear speakers to learn more about the prairie and make sure my information is as accurate as I can possibly make it. 

Moon Tiger, your first book, was published in 1984. What have you learned about the business of writing since then?
I’ve been at this job for thirty years and until the last few years have written mostly fiction. I’ve learned that there are no certainties, that it really is hard to make a living from writing, and that if you don’t love what you are doing, you will probably end up doing something else. I’m very lucky to still be doing what I love.

If very good friends are visiting for one evening, do you cook or go to a restaurant? If the former, what would you cook? If the latter, what restaurant?
If friends came and I felt daring enough to attempt cooking for them (and they felt daring enough to eat what I cooked), I might try something new like the recipe for fresh fig salad a friend just gave me, or I might go with something tried and true like squash lasagna. If they came in the summertime, I’d check the garden for whatever was ripe. If we went out to eat, I might take them to LeVain’s for wine and soup and salad and sides or to Emily’s for Lebanese food. Mostly I’d do whatever would make them the most comfortable.  

***

Click here to read more about Phyllis's many other books.

Alumni Voices: Debra McArthur

Same Writer, Different Voice

When I began the Hamline MFAC program back in 2008, my goal was not to be a published author. I’d already done that. I had six nonfiction books already published and two more in the publishing pipeline. But I had an idea in my head for a novel, and I knew I needed help. I was well-practiced at researching and writing nonfiction, but writing fiction was a very different pursuit. My intended project was historical fiction, and I already had done quite a lot of research in the historical period for a nonfiction book. This should be easy, right? Wrong.

I started this novel in much the same way I began those nonfiction books: Preliminary research followed by more detailed research, an outline (mostly based on historical events) with notes for the plan of the book, an intended word count for the project, and plans for back matter. Now that I think about all that, it makes me laugh at my naiveté. I thought I was writing a novel, but I was really writing a history book with characters sprinkled in.

I struggled with the book on my own for several years before my first semester at Hamline. I was used to the methods I used for writing nonfiction. When I wrote a history book, I knew how the story would end before I ever wrote the first chapter. I could work from my outline and write chapters in order. It was systematic, ordered, and relatively tidy (except for the books and notecards strewn around the house). I knew when I was finished. There is a degree of safety and comfort in that routine.

I had one big goal for myself in the Hamline program: find my novelist’s voice. My first semester, Jane Resh Thomas took me on a journey—but it wasn’t really a journey into my main character, it was a journey into myself. When I explored my own emotions and experiences, I found out more about my main character as well: what she loved, what she feared, what she hated. And I found out that my character was searching for the same thing I was: her voice. And I discovered that I was her major obstacle, not any antagonist in the story. I needed to get out of her way and let her speak for herself.

Transitioning to writing fiction was not easy for me. When I sit down to write, I often feel like Indiana Jones in The Last Crusade, where he steps out into thin air and solid rock appears beneath his foot. It is both scary and exciting at the same time.

Here are some things I love about writing fiction:

• Sometimes my characters come up behind me and whisper in my ear. They tell me things only they know—things I’ve never thought of before. They speak to me in their own voices, and it’s like music.
• Sometimes I begin a new chapter with absolutely no idea of what will happen next. If I sit there staring at the blank screen, nothing happens. If I begin to type, dialogue and action will appear on the page.
• Once in a while a character will totally surprise me with a line of dialogue or a twist that I never saw coming. I’ve been known to laugh out loud when this happens.
• The line between sanity and delusion may be pretty blurry for a fiction writer. That’s not necessarily bad.
• If I find myself really “stuck” and can’t move forward with the story, it’s a signal that I made a wrong turn somewhere in the last couple of chapters. I have to retrace my steps and find out where I imposed my own will on my character instead of letting him/her tell the story.
• The characters I love the most are the ones on whom I inflict the most misery. But I’ll always give them some hope, too.

And here are a couple of things I’ve learned: 

• No matter how fascinating the historical era (or fantasy/sci-fi world, etc.) of the story is, it is still the setting, not the story itself. Great stories are the stuff of all human life: love, longing, redemption, etc. 
• Readers may be interested in the world of the story, but they will only love the story if they really believe in the character.

Will I ever go back to writing nonfiction? Maybe. If I do, I hope that some of the magic of my fiction writing will come along for the ride. And I hope that my novelist’s voice will add a dimension that will make the nonfiction more engaging for the reader.

***

Debra McArthur is a 2010 graduate of the Hamline MFAC program. She is the author of eight nonfiction books on subjects of history, biography, and literary biography. Her novel, A Voice for Kanzas (Kane Miller, 2012) was her creative thesis at Hamline. She lives, writes, and works in Kansas City, MO. For more about Debra, visit her website.

  

Faculty Voices: Phyllis Root

Phyllis Root

The things we do for love

I’m currently working on promoting my new picture book Plant a Pocket of Prairie. As a raging introvert I’ve always loathed promotion. Talk to people you don’t know about how great your book is? Just the thought makes me curl up in a ball and whimper.

But I realized something with this book: I want people to love the prairie, not in a “aren’t the wildflowers pretty?” way but by understanding something of the complexity of prairie plants and animals in this vital and vanishing ecosystem and how even the small act of planting a seed might make a small difference. 

So I’m writing a reader’s guide for kindergartners. I’m gathering planting supplies for a planting project at book signings. I’m compiling photos of the prairie flowers I’ve seen for a very brief television interview. I’m practicing staying calm. I’m doing things I don’t normally do, and I’m doing it for love. You can’t love what you don’t know, and I want people to know and love the prairie.

I fell in love with a bog and wrote about it. I fell in love with the tall white pines in the Lost Forty and wrote about them. I have been in love with the prairie ever since I discovered it wasn’t just a field full of pretty flowers.

Most of all, for most of my life, I have been in love with words.

Love for what you are doing can carry you through the inevitable excruciating, sometimes hopeless, seemingless endless times. Love your words. Love your characters. Love your stories, painful or funny. Love your writing, even on the days (and I had many this past winter) when you must drag yourself to the page or the keyboard, when you hate what you’ve written and by extension everything about your life. 

Sometimes love is the only thing worth getting out of bed for.